neologik
July 29th, 2002, 02:31 AM
There should be a new column soon. I have one finished, but am not quite pleased with it yet, so I'm doing some revisions. There's no set frequency; I'm only putting them out when they're *good*, as opposed to droolingly fanatic rampages.
For more gabe-ish goodness (that being a subjective term, of course!) you can visit my new, not-quite-officially-launched critical webzine at http://deadcities.crimsonzine.com where you can find such wholesome fun as this:
"Where Stover shines above his contemporaries is in his characterization. Gone are the cardboard cutout characters that populate most fantasy series. There are no kitchen boys here, no princesses disguised as beggar girls, no grumpy old magicians. Stover is a master of creating complex, utterly realistic people to populate his stories, and Heroes Die is an exemplary novel because of it. Were his characters mere stock creations, the book would have been nothing but a shadow on the SFF map; instead, Stover rises above genre conventions to create a masterpiece."
and this:
"These days, science fiction is divided into a few easily-recognizable subgenres within the overarching science fiction label. There’s Big Space Opera, as exemplified by people like Stephen Baxter and Iain M. Banks. There’s Baen’s endless chugging line of military science fiction by folks like Eric Flint and David Drake, showing all the imagination of a chunk of sandstone. And, for variety, there’s always Alternate History (which doesn’t even belong in sf, in my less-than-humble opinion) regurgitated by people like Harry Turtledove and S.M. Sterling... and, for that matter, most of the military sf writers.
And then there’s the ‘other stuff’."
--gabe chouinard
http://hypermode.blogspot.com
http://pub44.ezboard.com/bdeadcitiesver3o19082
For more gabe-ish goodness (that being a subjective term, of course!) you can visit my new, not-quite-officially-launched critical webzine at http://deadcities.crimsonzine.com where you can find such wholesome fun as this:
"Where Stover shines above his contemporaries is in his characterization. Gone are the cardboard cutout characters that populate most fantasy series. There are no kitchen boys here, no princesses disguised as beggar girls, no grumpy old magicians. Stover is a master of creating complex, utterly realistic people to populate his stories, and Heroes Die is an exemplary novel because of it. Were his characters mere stock creations, the book would have been nothing but a shadow on the SFF map; instead, Stover rises above genre conventions to create a masterpiece."
and this:
"These days, science fiction is divided into a few easily-recognizable subgenres within the overarching science fiction label. There’s Big Space Opera, as exemplified by people like Stephen Baxter and Iain M. Banks. There’s Baen’s endless chugging line of military science fiction by folks like Eric Flint and David Drake, showing all the imagination of a chunk of sandstone. And, for variety, there’s always Alternate History (which doesn’t even belong in sf, in my less-than-humble opinion) regurgitated by people like Harry Turtledove and S.M. Sterling... and, for that matter, most of the military sf writers.
And then there’s the ‘other stuff’."
--gabe chouinard
http://hypermode.blogspot.com
http://pub44.ezboard.com/bdeadcitiesver3o19082